A Contribution to the History of Joy

A trail leads him to an orange house with a red roof on Prague’s Petřín hill, inhabited by three extraordinary elderly women: a yoga instructor, a filmmaker and a teacher of creative writing. While the old ladies are away on some mysterious business, the policeman sneaks into their house. In the basement he discovers a vast archive of documents dating back to World War II.

What connects the murder case with the three women and their treasure trove documenting thousands of cases of rape and abuse? Will the family of the young Indian woman who died after being gang-raped ever get justice? Will the ringleaders of the gang in the north of England who groomed young girls and forced them into prostitution ever be convicted for their crimes? Or is vigilante justice the only possible response to such evil? 

Only twittering swallows, roaming freely from continent to continent, have the answers and can make all the connections from their bird’s eye view. Disguised as a crime novel and combining fact and fiction, Radka Denemarková’s fourth novel is a passionate indictment of all forms of violence against women whenever and wherever it occurs.